The Galebriar Witch
by Luxen T
Summary: Dean, Sam, and Castiel make a trip to visit Claire, who has moved away to university, when she calls them with a case. An ancient coven of witches is on a rampage, and a peculiar specialty makes this case especially dangerous for one of the four hunters: these witches specialize in angels. An AU fic set post-season-11 but doesn't have Sam being kidnapped or season 12's events.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer** : I do not own any part of Supernatural or anything even tangentially related to it. Well, except for my Funkopop figures, but I don't own the rights to those. I only own this particular arrangement of fan written fiction because I have written and arranged it, in its entirety, myself without any outside input. If you would like to write something loosely based on this fic – I'm going to start playing with angel lore later, for example – feel free! But please reference me in your notes on your work. And message me so that I can read it! I'd love that!

 **Author Notes/Introduction** : Howdy! If you have followed me as an author due to my Young Justice fanfics, I promise I haven't forgotten the story in progress on that end, but my time for writing is very slim right now and is being devoted to whatever is pressing on my mind most at the time. If you happen to be both a YJ fan and a Supernatural fan, I hope you'll enjoy this one! This first chapter is really short (especially if you know how long my chapters can usually get), but I'm really excited about getting back to writing after so long and wanted to post what I'd written so far. At the very least, it's a taste of my writing style, and the story will really get rolling in the next chapter. Thanks for reading!

 **Chapter 1: Alert**

Claire's eyes were half lidded, half staring dazedly at the computer in front of her. Her mind was half asleep, half churning synonymous words on a never-ending rotation.

This paper was killing her.

She tried to be a responsible college kid – she really did. She had started this paper, only a three page or 1,200 to 1,800 word assignment, at 8:00 p.m. a full five hours ago and a day before it was due. The last paper she had turned into her freshman composition course, though, had come back with marks taken off for word choice – word choice! – for sheer lack of seeing the need or having the desire to replace perfectly fine words with more complicated ones. She needed to bring up her grade in this course, and she had assumed, perhaps mistakenly, that concentrating on bettering her word choice would be the easiest correction to make to help her begin losing fewer points on papers as soon as possible. And so the waking half of her mind continued spinning along like a thesaurus, trying to choose the word to best replace "show."

Perhaps "demonstrate" or "suggest" or "accentuate" or "highlight" . . . or "demonstrate" or "suggest" or "accentuate" or "highlight" . . . or "demonstrate" or "suggest"–

A ping from her computer set her eyelids fluttering as it drew her out of her stupor. Instinctively, she clicked on the notification that had popped up in the right-hand corner of her computer screen. She gazed at it. For several moments. Then finally realized she wasn't actually reading it. She took a deep breath, yawned, and stretched her arms above her head, her black and white striped sleep t-shirt stretching with her so that a small strip of her belly showed above her gray sweatpants. Wiping her face with a hand and feeling a little more awake, she tried again to read the notification.

It was a police radio alert. When she'd chosen to go back to her studies, she'd decided to move out of Judy's home and into a college dorm at a new university, a fresh start on her own again, but she hadn't entirely given up on the hunting life. A week of normalcy after moving into her dorm room with a new roommate had been enough to convince her that she couldn't survive it. Normalcy, that is. Yet, she'd been honest enough with herself to know that she needed to concentrate if she was going to make school work. So she'd gotten smarter. She'd figured out how to set up an alert system that filed through internet articles about nearby crimes, "read" them, and then pinged across her computer and smartphone whenever at least three articles had a certain number of words – other than words like "the" or "I" – in common.

This notification was one of those alerts. She sat forward in the flimsy, plastic dorm desk chair and smoothed back her messy blonde hair as she skimmed through it. Most of these alerts were nothing at all. If all one was looking for was common words, half the muggings in the county sounded similar enough to set off the alert system. This alert, though . . . this one might be something.

Glancing over her shoulder at her roommate's bed and reassuring herself that she was asleep, she picked up the phone and dialed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes** : Ok! Now we have a decently sized chapter. We've got our team assembled and the first bits of the case falling into place. This is my first Supernatural fic, so I'm really enjoying writing Team Free Will. Their characters are so different from each other that writing dialogue for them is a real treat. The script writers must have loads of fun. My biggest worry: Dean's dialogue. He's practically a poet, if an uncouth one, and I'm going to be working hard to try to get anywhere close to his kind of dialogue. Anywho! Review if you feel so inclined. If not, that's fine too!

Additionally, a note on names. I realize that there's some disagreement as to how to spell Castiel's diminutive name, but I choose to spell it Cas. Also, "Circe" is pronounced Sir-see with emphasis on the first syllable for anyone who may not know. It's pronounced just like Cersei Lannister's name is, for anyone who watches _Game of Thrones_.

 **Disclaimer** : See the first chapter's disclaimer.

 **Chapter 2: Back in the Saddle**

The phone rang through the entirety of the ringer cycle and fell silent again. It was still a number of minutes before Dean's hand flopped onto his bedside table and felt around for the cell. Finally finding it, he held it in front of his face, half-lifted from his pillow, and squinted at the bright screen. He'd thought he had been dreaming that the phone was ringing, but it did show a missed call. Not even trying to read the caller ID, he called the number back.

"Hey, Dean; I know it's late," a blunt female voice answered after just one ring. Dean frowned and sat up in bed when he recognized the voice, fumbling for his lamp's pull.

"Claire? Yeah, it's late. Why the heck are you waking me up?" he managed to grind out in acceptable English.

"'Cause I have a case," Claire shot back, "and, yes, it's a real one. What's your email?"

Dean blinked rapidly, trying to keep up. "Why?"

Claire huffed, her breath crackling over the phone. "So I can email you the information, stupid; what is it?"

Rolling his eyes, Dean pulled the phone away from his ear long enough to text it to her. "Texted it to you. And delete that text when you get it; I don't need any of your buddies prank calling me." He paused, realizing that didn't make sense. "Or prank emailing . . . whatever."

Another huff crackled over the line before Claire hung up.

"Nice chatting," Dean muttered to himself as he flopped back onto his bed, pulling up his email and waiting. It was an odd feeling, hearing Claire's voice. It had been a while since he, Sam, and Castiel had given thought to anything beyond the pressing threat of the Darkness. After that had been handled, there had been Mary, his mother, a ghost from the past and a gift for the future. But this literal call from the nearer past was a promise of the present, a reminder that life was still rolling on. Cas would be happy to see Claire again, but Dean smiled to himself, realizing he would be too.

By the time the email came through, he was awake enough to actually read the articles she had pasted in links to. He frowned at the first one, immediately recognizing the concern, but there were four others like it. He didn't even bother to finish reading the last one.

He strode quickly into the hallway, found Sam's door, and pounded on it. A muffled shout told him he'd managed to wake him, and the door was yanked open a few seconds later.

"What?" Sam demanded. He stood in the doorway, filling it with both literally and physically towering annoyance, his sleep pants all twisted and his hair a mess, but his eyes darted back and forth, checking the hallway as though perhaps Dean had an emergency reason for hammering on his door at this hour. Seeing nothing, he glared and drew himself up even taller. "This had better be good," he said, sighing harshly.

"Why?" Dean replied, grinning. "I scare you?"

Sam cocked his head and worked his jaw, and Dean decided to stop pushing him.

"Claire called," he said simply. "She's got a case." Dean shoved his phone into Sam's chest, waiting a moment for Sam to grab it. "I'm gonna grab a shower; you take a look at that."

Sam was already skimming through the articles when Dean turned away to hit the shower; Dean's waking him up at this hour meant either that he was stir-crazy after only a few days of rest or Claire had a real case. Or – he skimmed through the last two articles – perhaps it was a bit of both. He forewent a shower himself, dressed in a button-up and jeans, and headed to the kitchen to make them both coffee. He was just putting the pot under the machine when he heard a shuffle in the doorway and turned to see Castiel coming in. Castiel paused in front of the doorway, his eyes squinting in confusion.

"Morning, Cas," Sam said, quirking his mouth into a half smile.

Castiel's eyes squinted further. "It is, although the expression is usually saved for daylight hours."

"We've got a case," Sam said, recognizing the unasked question and supplying the answer. "From Claire, actually. You coming with?" he asked, grabbing cups while he waited on the coffee, his hand lingering over a third cup.

"Of course," Castiel said frowning.

Sam nodded and grabbed the third cup just as Dean edged his way into the kitchen past Castiel followed by Mary. Castiel nodded to Mary who nodded awkwardly back, edging around him more carefully than Dean had. It was difficult enough comprehending that her two sons were men, her husband dead, herself long dead and back again, but for Mary the angel had somehow been the last straw. Some part of her mind kept itching to believe he wasn't real. Accepting her new life, the life her boys had lived without her, was mind-bending and made her question her sanity. She had this instinctual need to question something, anything, so that she could continue to consider herself a reasonable person. So she questioned what seemed to her the most questionable thing in the room.

"Dean said you have a case," Mary said cautiously, observant eyes shifting steadily between only her sons.

"Yeah, well," Sam began, taking a deep breath while he tried to find his words, "I hope he didn't wake you. It's nothing for you to worry about."

"He didn't wake me," she said, sitting at the kitchen table. "Well, he woke you, and his waking you woke me. Sort of hard to miss. What's the case?"

Sam shot Dean an uncertain look. "It . . . looks like witches. No big deal. There's already another hunter, a friend of ours, tracking it." He ignored the odd way Castiel looked at him when he described Claire that way. "She called in some help, and it seems like a good way to get back in the saddle. We won't be gone long."

Dean nodded. "Sure. A few days at most. The fridge is stocked, and, um, you know how to use cell phones now, so you can call if you need anything."

"I'm a hunter too, Dean," Mary replied, gritting her teeth. "You don't have to pack me away in here."

"Well," Sam said, taking a soothing tone, "there's just really no need. And you just got back–"

"And you said that you'd be taking a full week off after everything with the Darkness or whatever it was," Mary rejoined. "It's been three days. Maybe you're right, though; maybe this is a good time for us all to get back in the saddle."

"I think," Castiel said slowly, "that perhaps they'd feel better if they knew you were safe here for now."

Mary frowned at him but otherwise said nothing.

"We know you're a hunter," Sam said, "a really good one. I mean, we've actually seen you in action before . . ." He froze for a moment at that, glancing at Castiel. "Well, that's hard to explain. Time travel. Weird. But the point is we think we'll be fine to handle this one on our own, and there's no reason to go dragging you around the country so soon."

Mary opened her mouth to respond, but Dean beat her to it this time, trying and failing to adopt the same sort of soothing tone Sam was so good at. "What he means is you were a hunter. A long time ago. And things have changed, even the monsters have changed these days. We haven't had the time to bring you up to speed, and it's dangerous to do that on the job, so . . ." He looked to Sam for some sort of encouragement or help, but Sam was grimacing and pouring coffee. "So please just stay here for this one. We'll be back in a few days, and we'll keep you posted."

Mary opened her mouth again, but this time was interrupted by Castiel who nodded as though the matter were now settled and stepped forward to take his own coffee from Sam. "We are leaving now, then," he said without a hint of a question.

Sam nodded, but sighed and stepped up to Mary whose face was now carefully not objecting . . . or showing any emotion really. "Maybe you can get into our records and find out what things look like now while we're gone. I'll leave dad's journal and mine and Dean's on the table in the library for you . . . and we really will be back safe soon. I promise."

Mary searched his eyes a moment, pursed her lips and sighed, but finally nodded. "Right. Come back safe."

Sam gave her a small, awkward smile. Then he, Dean, and Castiel left her sitting there. They all spared her an uncertain glance as they left, but she only watched her sons do this. Castiel's concerned glance found her with her eyes on the table, and then he too was gone.

The three packed into the Impala, and left. As it did so often, the sound of the engine, the road, and the same music they'd listened to all their lives helped them focus forward and leave the trouble that was behind them for another day.

A little over twenty-four hours later saw them pulling into the guest parking of a college dorm dressed out already in their FBI suits. They knew better than to try investigating any sites without Claire, and Castiel had been interested in – perhaps insistent on was more accurate – seeing how Claire was living and getting on now. He had been quietly but genuinely happy to hear from Dean that Claire was now experiencing a little normal life, even if she was still involved in hunting. It bothered him that she hadn't called to tell him about moving out of Sheriff Mills' home, but he reasoned that this could just mean that she was feeling settled in and comfortable with her life now. If so, he wanted to see that, and if not . . . well, he wanted to know that too.

Castiel was the first out of the car when Dean had parked her near the entry to the building and the first to reach the entry doors. His brisk pace probably saved several college girls in the dorm halls from Dean's flirting, but he was too preoccupied looking for room 107 to notice that only Sam with his long stride was finding it easy to keep up with him. When he found the correct room on the far end of the hall, his hand reached by instinct for the door handle, resting on it and jostling it before he stopped, realizing he should knock. By the time he'd raised his hand to do so, however, the door had already been pulled open, and he found his knuckles raised in front of a girl's face. Not Claire's though. He frowned as he lowered his arm, but before he could ask if he had the right room the bright smile on the girl's face faltered and her gaze dropped sharply to his shoes as she immediately stepped out of the way of the door.

"If you're here for Claire . . ." she began, pausing expectantly for confirmation.

"Yes," Castiel replied, unsure if her moving out of his way had been invitation to enter or not. "I'm . . . Clarence. And this is Dean and Sam. Claire was expecting us."

The girl nodded, brown, wavy hair bouncing with the jerky movement as she continued staring oddly at Castiel's feet, head turned toward him but stubbornly away from his face. "She was. Please, come in. She'll be right back; there was a problem turning in a paper online . . . something. She ran to the computer center to handle it, but she told me to tell you she'd be right back."

Castiel stepped inside, then stepped further inside as he realized that in the small room he'd have to in order for both Dean and Sam to fit. "Thank you. We'll just wait for her then." He watched her curiously as she nodded jerkily again, snuck looks up into Dean and Sam's faces, and, seeming more at ease, smiled welcomingly at them. Castiel assumed this girl was Claire's roommate, but despite her oddly shy behavior the room was more interesting to him, and he let his gaze wander over it, guessing at which things were Claire's. Or trying to.

On the right wall were bunk beds, but both of them were very sparsely furnished with simple sheets and monochromatic duvets. The bottom one was black and the other red; Claire seemed to like black, so perhaps that one was hers, but there was no real way to tell. Some clothing items were draped over the bed's rails, and they looked like the kinds of things Claire would wear, but, stealing a glance at Claire's roommate, it looked like she wore the same kind of clothes herself. She wore the same sort of ripped skinny jeans and edgy t-shirts; he could imagine them sharing the same dark nail polishes, but maybe that was him hoping she could have that sort of friendship in her life.

A long desk built into the wall spanned nearly the full length of the left wall, only stopping where the door would miss it when it swung open. The desk had enough space for two chairs and two studying areas, one for each occupant, and a small food area with a microwave, coffee maker, and water boiler on top and a mini-fridge underneath. Again, it was difficult to tell what belonged to which girl. Only one laptop was on the desk, but nothing could tell him whose it was; the books didn't help since he didn't know what Claire was studying, and the only other decoration was a woven area rug in dark blue on the floor. There was no telling if that belonged to Claire or to –

"I'm sorry, what was your name?" Castiel asked the girl, suddenly realizing his rudeness.

The girl didn't startle, but her head whipped in his direction, shortly followed by the rest of her body so that she was facing him entirely. Yet, still she would not look up from his feet. "Circe," she said simply. "I'm sorry, I should have said."

"Not at all," Castiel said, turning back to his study of the room.

"Can I get any of you something to drink?" Circe asked, turning back to Sam and Dean with a bright smile and warm brown eyes. None of them had a chance to answer her, though, before she had produced three bottled waters for them, handing the first two to Dean and Sam and then awkwardly handing off the third to Castiel. Then she seemed to decide that they also needed coffee and was busy getting the coffee maker on when Claire finally slammed through the door, almost hitting Dean with it.

"Whoa!" Dean yelled, shuffling in the cramped room to get away from the door. "Gangway."

"Sorry," Claire said, shrugging. "I just need to put this down, and I'll be ready to go." Scooting between Dean and Sam, she put her laptop and a newly printed document on the desk. Castiel made a mental note that the other laptop, and the things surrounding it, must be Circe's.

"You printed it?" Circe asked Claire, frowning. "I thought the paper was due online to Turnitin."

"It was," Claire said as she turned to the bottom bunk and fished under the pillow. "But I couldn't get it to submit. Printed it and sent an email to the prof about it." Not finding what she wanted under her pillow, she threw back the duvet and found her phone. Castiel noted that there was a stuffed Grumpy Cat under there too, and his mouth quirked into a small smile. The bed with the black duvet was Claire's after all.

"That won't get it checked for plagiarism," Circe said.

"Yeah, but nothing I can do about it if the site's not working." Claire straightened from pulling the duvet back up and sniffed. "That coffee?"

"I was making some."

"Why?"

"Company."

Claire paused, then made a face at Circe. "Doof. We're headed out, so you can turn that off." She caught Dean's eye and jerked her head toward the door; Dean rolled his eyes but led the way back out of the room.

"Nah, we'll have iced coffee later," Circe said, grinning.

"Whatever; see you later," Claire called around the door before pulling it roughly closed. "Ok, where to?" she asked, finally turning toward the guys.

"Well, nice to see you too," Dean said. "We go to the car first. Because we need to talk before we decide on where we're going. There's a rhyme and reason to this, ok, a system. Respect the system. Cool your jets."

"Right. And meanwhile someone else could be dying," Claire huffed.

"Car." Dean nodded toward the exit. "Then we'll decide."

Claire rolled her eyes but grinned as she turned toward the exit. "I get it, ok? We don't discuss in public; I just thought maybe you'd already decided."

"What, without your input?" Dean grinned, stepping up to walk beside her. "This is your hunt. We're just the muscle."

"Right. Because last time everyone was so quick to trust my judgment."

"Well, we've worked together more than once now." Dean cocked his head back at Castiel. "And you're family. I would say we trust you to have judgments that aren't so stupid we can't correct them."

Claire ignored the teasing and followed Dean's gaze back to Castiel. "Thanks for coming," she said, directing it at him before nodding to Sam and Dean as well. "I'm actually trying to concentrate on my school work, so the 'muscle' is appreciated."

Dean opened the door outside for them, then followed them to the car. Sam, of course, took shotgun, while Castiel opened the back door and held it for Claire. She ducked in and slid across the seat to make room for him.

"Hey. Like the tie," Claire said, nodding toward it where it looped loosely under Castiel's collar.

Castiel had two these days, one for everyday and one for his FBI suit, the one he was wearing just now. It wasn't special, but it was one Claire hadn't seen before. Not knowing what to make of the fact that she not only noticed when he did or didn't wear one but also noticed what it looked like, he just pursed his lips and nodded. "I like your school."

Claire huffed a laugh and grinned. "You like it just because it's a school and I'm in it. So." She leaned forward between the front seats. "Now where to?"

Sam twisted in his seat to face her. "He likes it because it's a school and you're in it and that's a good life for you."

"Sam's a nerd," Dean said, looking over his shoulder at her. "We've got five options. One: a public librarian dies at home in her kitchen with her wrists cut by library cards. Weird, ok, but also the oldest case. Possibly coldest. Two: a four-year old girl dies during her nap at daycare, suffocated on partially chewed, mushy goldfish cracker paste."

"Dude," Sam interrupted, grimacing at his wording.

Dean shrugged. "Witches, man. They're gross. Three: a fourteen-year old boy dies choked to death by his seatbelt and airbag in the front passenger seat of his mom's car. The car's emergency alert indicates a minor crash that resulted in the airbag deploying, but his mom was pumping gas when it happened. There was no accident. Four: a man working a soup kitchen dies when a homeless man he was feeding brains him with a soup ladle; the homeless man then chokes himself to death on the ladle . . . we won't go into how he managed that. And five: the highest priest, or whatever you call the guy in charge, at a local church dies eating himself." Dean slapped the steering wheel with pretended glee. "Great list of choices; lots of variety."

"I think we should look into the priest first," Sam said. "Seems like the easiest one to make a connection to motive on, and there was a witness, a sister who walked in on him just before he died."

Dean nodded, considering. "Plus, it turns out that church ran the soup kitchen where the other guy got death by large spoon."

Castiel frowned. "The dead children trouble me more. What motive could there have been to murder a toddler?"

"I've been thinking about that," Claire interjected eagerly. "I just think it doesn't make much sense for this to be, you know, the normal keeping-up-with-the-Joneses witch stuff."

Dean rolled his eyes upward in confusion. "What?"

"You know, most witch magic is just amateurs trying to get ahead. This lady wants a better car than her neighbor or that one thinks her husband was passed over for a promotion. But it's like Castiel said: why kill a baby?"

Sam shrugged. "Well, maybe jealousy. Some lady jealous of someone else's family."

"Yeah, maybe, but a teenager not related to the toddler? A librarian?"

"We could have a coven," Castiel offered, "or at least a group of amateurs. They might all want different things."

"Sure," Claire said, shrugging, "and maybe we do, but it still looks to me like no one is benefitting from this at all. I looked into the victims and their families, their jobs – the ones old enough to have jobs. No one is moving into a higher position with the library" – she filled that word with sarcasm – "because one librarian died. Maybe the kids were jealousy kills, but they were too young to have life insurance. Nobody has taken the priest's position, and the man at the soup kitchen was just recently homeless himself. He had nothing."

"Right," Dean said, nodding. "So jealousy and spite is pretty much the only motive that seems likely."

"That's good," Sam said. "That's an easy motive to track. Comparatively speaking."

"Back to square one, then," Dean said. "I second the priest. It's the newest death, and, if there was a hex bag somewhere, it's least likely to have been found or cleaned out already. Claire, your vote? You can settle or tie us."

Claire thought, her eyes flicking from Dean to Castiel and back again. "The soup kitchen is behind the church. We'll go there first and hit two spots at once. But I can't help." She gestured at the suits the men were all wearing. "I don't exactly own a pantsuit."

Dean started the car and pulled away, and Castiel patted Claire's shoulder reassuringly while using it as an excuse to pull her safely back in her seat. "You can come with me, and we'll try to find any homeless people who might have witnessed the soup kitchen incident. You should put your seatbelt on."

Claire opened her mouth to respond to the first part, then did a double-take at the seatbelt remark. "You're not wearing yours."

Castiel's eyes narrowed at that; he looked sideways at his own unused safety restraint. "I . . . old habits. It's strange enough learning to ride in these claustrophobic contraptions." He paused to frown up at the juncture between the door and the roof, momentarily distracted by memories of a time when the Impala genuinely did feel claustrophobic, when his true form encased in a human form encased in a metal box tingled with objection at the containment, back before the metal box had come to feel like safety, home on wheels. "Old habits," he repeated. "I'll wear mine if you wear yours." He fumblingly strapped his own without waiting for agreement.

Claire scoffed and rolled her eyes, but, if Castiel had been watching her face instead of watching to be sure she snapped in her buckle as they pulled onto the main road, he'd have seen her smile. He was good at missing those moments when he made people smile.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Notes** : And now the drama starts! And the mystery. Mol! (Mwhahaha out loud…) I don't really have any notes this time. Leave a review if you feel so inclined!

 **Edit** : This chapter has been edited to fix a mistake that a reader caught. Thanks to all y'all who read carefully enough to catch silly things like my brain deciding that very dead people are still alive!

 **Disclaimer** : see the first chapter's disclaimer.

 **Chapter 3: Rarely What We Might Expect**

The Impala swerved out of the street into the small parking lot behind an only somewhat larger Catholic church. The sign by the front entrance named it St. Jude's, which Dean only noted as confirmation that he was in the right place. Sam and Castiel both thought on that name with silent interest, already searching for possible motives and connections to the case: St. Jude was considered by the Catholic faithful to be the patron saint of hope and impossible causes. Sam knew this because he had researched the name; Castiel knew this because he happened to have know a few angels in his time who had been tasked with ministering to saints. There was no guarantee that the name was even remotely important, but both of them filed it away in their minds for consideration.

The church, while modestly sized, had a humble beauty. The walls were of rough stone, not brick or wood, and the stained-glass windows running the length of the side walls were particularly stunning. The windows were small, and the pictures in them were simple, but the pieces of colored glass were themselves quite tiny. Little shards of color framed by larger rectangular pieces of frosted glass formed images of a number of Biblical scenes, all of them moments of service and ministry. However complicated his own relationship with his Father at this point, Castiel couldn't help nodding to himself at the appropriate, quiet reverence the building paid to humility and the beauty of everyday sacrifices. It suited the saint the church was named for and made the place feel welcoming and unthreatening, especially to an angel who had made so many mistakes in arrogance.

On the church's left – the Impala's right, since they were parked behind the church – was the soup kitchen, nestled up to the back corner of the church. This building looked newer, wasn't made with stones or stained-glass, and wasn't as beautiful, but it too made Castiel feel welcome. It hadn't been so long ago that unassuming buildings with low roofs, paint that sometimes peeled at the corners, and rough but industrial kitchens inside had been some of the few places to guarantee him warmth, dry places to sit, and a little something warm in a painfully empty stomach. This building's white paint wasn't peeling, and the whole place looked very well kept from the small flower gardens of the grounds to the pristine roof and clean concrete steps and wheelchair ramp. But, it was recognizable all the same, and while Castiel no longer required those human things like food and rest he still associated this building with refuge.

Dean and Sam almost simultaneously opened their doors and stepped out of the car, closely followed by Claire. Castiel lingered a moment longer as he fumbled with his seatbelt. He hadn't been expecting the seatbelt to pop out of the buckle without being pulled when he pressed the release button, so he had quickly grabbed the belt to keep it from flying into his face. He had eased it back by hand nearly halfway before he realized that the belt was mostly slack and would slowly retract itself if he released it, which he promptly did. By the time he exited the vehicle, Sam and Dean were studiously ignoring him while Claire put her tongue into her cheek and bit it to keep from smiling. Which, Castiel noted, didn't actually keep her from smiling.

"So," Sam said, clearing his throat. "Dean and I will take the church. Cas, you and Claire will take the soup kitchen. I don't think it's open for visitors right now," he said, pausing to check his phone for the time, "but you may be able to ask some volunteers where you can find some witnesses. If anyone asks about Claire, just make something up. Uh, tell them . . . tell them she's there in case any witnesses feel uncomfortable talking with a fed in a suit." Sam shrugged. "People will buy anything if you say it with a straight face and a badge in your pocket."

Castiel frowned. "But no one can see the contents of my pockets."

"They'll know it's in your pocket after you've flashed it at them, geez," Claire half explained, half complained. "I really need to find a suit, so I don't have to keep letting you take the lead."

Castiel opened his mouth to reply, then closed it with a frustrated sigh, pursing his lips.

Claire grinned. "Well, I've BS-ed you before. I think I could BS my way around a bogus federal investigation."

"At the risk of sounding self-deprecating," Castiel said, rolling his eyes skyward, "I'm not exactly difficult to trick. I wouldn't consider yourself a master con-artist on account of pulling the wool over my eyes once. You follow my lead."

"That just . . .," Claire sputtered. "Ok, that's just sad, and there are so many things wrong with that logic." She held her hands up in defeat. "Fine. I follow your lead, and don't worry, I'm right here to pull your feathered ass out of the fire when you get us busted."

Castiel sighed again, turned, and began making his way toward the soup kitchen. "We'll call if we find anything."

"Yep," Dean said, winking at Claire as she followed after Castiel. "If anything's going to bust them," he said to Sam, "it's going to be that arguing."

"They'll be fine," Sam said, leading the way toward the front entry of the church. "They argue like family; it's a good thing."

Dean grinned fondly as he opened the wooden doors to the church. "She kind of reminds me of me. 'Feathered ass.' Not bad."

"'Not bad?' I think you mean juvenile," Sam said, returning the grin and ducking in behind him – literally, the door was actually fairly low. "Or did you miss that you just compared yourself to a teenage girl?"

"Adult now," Dean corrected. "A very badass adult who just so happens to be female. Not her fault."

"Right. And that makes me Cas, I guess."

Dean shrugged. "You're both dorks."

Sam rolled his eyes, smiling as he nodded toward the taped off altar table on the raised stage at the back of the church not ten pews away. The church seemed even smaller from inside. "That's where the priest died." He looked around the sanctuary. "Doesn't look like anyone's home. Guess the authorities already found everything they were looking for before we got here."

Dean walked the length of the short aisle and stopped before the altar, giving it a look over. Blood still stained the wood of the altar and the fabric of the altar cloth, but no hex bags or unusual markings were immediately visible.

"He was preparing for the Eucharist," Sam said, "according to the sister who found him. He didn't have any last words. According to coroner's records, he had apparently been eating chunks out of his hands and arms for some time before he took a bite out of his wrist deep enough to bleed out. When he was found, he was drinking from the wounds, and it's estimated he'd died before an ambulance was even called."

Dean grimaced down at the altar in disgust. "Sick. I hate witches."

"We technically have no evidence it was actually witchcraft," Sam said. "We're just assuming."

"Yeah. Because it's weird, weird, batshit crazy, and more weird. And I don't think I need to point out the bodily fluids." Dean did anyway, gesturing at all the dark brown stains.

Sam pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I don't know, Dean. I don't see anything that looks like a hex or a curse," he said, ducking under the yellow tape. He walked around the altar carefully, looking and feeling for any tampering which might show that someone had hidden something in or under the altar. Finding nothing, he took a pen from his pocket and used it to lift up corners of the altar cloth to see the surface underneath. The wood was clean, unblemished; it even looked recently polished. Then a spot on the altar cloth itself caught his eye. He turned his head to get a better angle. "Dean, look at this."

Dean ducked under the tape to join Sam and looked closely at the bloodstain Sam was pointing at with his pen. The bloodstain was simply one giant blot among many, but underneath it was some sort of inked-on symbol that had become hard to see once the blood had darkened the surrounding cloth. It was tiny and difficult to make out, but the symbol didn't look like any Judeo-Christian mark he'd ever seen before. It looked something like a flower with a circle for the center half-surrounded by a crown of petals. Each petal was itself a tiny, intricate symbol.

"Ok, well, that's not Catholic," Dean said, as Sam shook his head in agreement. "I don't know what it _is_ , but I'm pretty sure I've never seen six be a very Christian number." He pointed individually to each of the "petals" on the "flower"; they numbered six.

"No," Sam said. "And whatever the rest of these are, I'm pretty sure that one," – he pointed out the sixth "petal" which included crossed horizontal and vertical lines resting in the curve of a horseshoe-like symbol – "has an upside down cross in it."

Dean frowned at it somewhat dubiously. "Well, we could be looking at it upside down."

"Not likely," Sam said, shaking his head again. "That symbol it's sitting in is an omega, the last letter in the Greek alphabet, and it's right side up if we look at it this way. The cross is definitely upside down."

"Or," Dean said, nodding to himself, "if we look at it the other way, the omega thing could actually be an upside down horseshoe that's pouring out all of the good luck like your luck had run out and only Christ can save you."

Sam blinked and cocked his head. "Really, Dean?"

"Ok, yeah, your interpretation is better," Dean conceded. "But since we don't know what the rest of it means . . ."

"Yeah, I'll send a picture to Mom. Maybe she can find something in the library." Sam snapped a picture on his phone and texted it with an explanation of where they'd found it and their current theories. "There's no one here to question, I guess, so . . ."

Dean nodded. "So we go find Cas and Claire and hope they haven't killed each other or been arrested."

Castiel watched for a moment as Claire chatted with an elderly female volunteering with the kitchen, her peppered red hair pulled up in a bun under a hairnet and her spry figure covered by an apron. Despite Claire's earlier boasts, there was little "BS-ing," as she called it, happening, just genuine conversation. Not for the first time, Castiel saw the heart of the sweet little girl he had once briefly taken as a vessel rise above the rough exterior that had been painted over it to soothe the pain of a loveless life. Claire and the older woman were congenially bantering about the "fashionable" tears in Claire's jeans, and, while neither agreed, neither was genuinely vested in her opinion. Perhaps it was actually a form of BS-ing to play right into this older woman's desire to be grandmotherly, but, then, perhaps it was simply kind. And then again, perhaps it was both. Castiel cocked his head at his current partner, considering. Perhaps this was what was meant by kindness before honesty.

"Agent, I hope no one has changed their minds about letting us re-open."

Castiel redirected his attention back to the volunteer he was speaking with. A middle-aged, Caucasian male, blonde, brown-eyed . . . he was unassuming, quiet, and, at the moment, concerned. "Sorry to worry you, no. We are . . . simply following up." A moment of decision flashed behind Castiel's eyes, and he tried the half-truth, the BS-ing, the kindness before honesty. "Believe me, we understand the value of what you are doing here. We only want first-hand accounts of what happened. So we can prevent it happening again." He did not mention his own experiences with soup kitchens, nor how he felt being here, and certainly not that he was trailing the possibility of witchcraft, but he offered what he could. And it seemed to work; the man nodded, soothed. This was not something new, something he hadn't tried before, but for the first time he began to feel as though he understood how the half-truth worked, what it accomplished. He offered the volunteer a smile that was only half to soothe him further and the other half because he felt pleased with his discovery.

"Good," the volunteer said. Castiel remembered him saying his name was Thomas. "I mean, thank you. It's just, there are people depending on us here."

"Yes," Castiel agreed, shoving aside his personal epiphany. "Can you direct me to any witnesses? Any of the homeless or staff who may have been present?"

"Well . . .," Thomas said, "the homeless, you understand . . . they're hard to keep track of. Many of them work the same parking lots or streets all day, but some don't. And what happened that day, well, if you haven't been able to get in touch with the ones we already told you to look for, it's probably because they don't want to be found, don't want to think about it, you know?" He frowned and nodded to himself as though he were actually reasoning with himself and not this FBI agent. "The homeless have enough problems without having to deal with freak incidents like this. And the kitchen was closed for several days; it's disrupted things. People panic a little. People try new streets, new parking lots. They give up on us or they're too afraid to come back. What we do . . . it's really delicate. There's trust. And I think that's been messed with. Broken. For people who are already very broken." Thomas squinted at Castiel and frowned more deeply, trying to understand why he felt the urge to keep babbling on like this to this agent. The others had made him want to shut up. "You understand," Thomas finished; it was half a conclusion, half a statement. Thomas felt that somehow this man truly did understand.

Castiel nodded. "Yes. We haven't been able to track down the people you directed us to before. Perhaps there were volunteers present?"

Thomas grimaced. "Of course there were. I was there, actually, but I've already been questioned. If there was anything else you wanted to ask . . . well," he swallowed nervously and licked his lips, "of course I'd be happy to answer. It was . . . it was just terrible, you know?"

Castiel nodded again. "I've heard it was. I . . . I can only imagine what it must have been like to see, and I hate to ask you again. But sometimes it helps to hear it from the source instead of a file. Would you mind?"

Thomas took a deep breath, smiling tremulously. "I do mind. But that doesn't mean I won't tell. Where to start . . . well, I was there at the end of the counter." He nodded behind him to his left, the far end of the serving counter. "It's funny; the person at the end, I think, has the hardest job. All we do is hand out utensils and napkins, but one of two things happens by the time the person being served gets to us. Either they've relaxed enough through the line that they just want to pour smiles on us and needless, endless chatter, or they've gotten so ashamed by the end of the line that they won't even look us in the eyes. It's hard being the person with the spoons and forks and napkins . . . sorry, I'm babbling. What I mean is, I was entirely focused on the person in front of me, right? So I didn't see it happen. John . . . I didn't see him die. It was fast. You'd never believe someone could kill someone . . ." Thomas gulped what sounded like mostly air, like his mouth was so dry that when he swallowed he had to swallow air to swallow anything. "Could kill someone with a soup ladle so fast. I don't even know how he got hold of it. Gin was his name. A regular. Not sure why they called him that. People used to tease him, call him Ginny but spell it with a J and an E, you know? The girl's name. He didn't care. As even keeled and gentle a soul as you could find. And somehow he got hold of a soup ladle and just killed John with it. I didn't even look up until it was already done and Gin was shoving the handle . . ." Thomas swallowed air again and looked sick. "Well, you know."

Castiel nodded, briefly reflecting that he was doing that often; Thomas didn't seem to mind it. "We took the soup ladle," he said to confirm that the real authorities had done so.

Thomas nodded. "Evidence. Not sure what anyone would get off of it, though. A soup ladle can't make someone kill someone."

Castiel frowned and didn't nod this time. "Of course. What about the pot? Anything at all that we didn't take that might have been present at the time."

Thomas frowned, for the first time looking confused. "Well . . . I mean, no, you didn't take the pot in as evidence. Gin didn't kill John with the pot."

"I understand," Castiel said, pursing his lips and nodding, trying to soothe the man again. "But every little thing helps."

Thomas' eyes flicked back toward the kitchen area uncertainly, but then he shrugged. "It's been cleaned since then, but I know which one it was. It's the same one every Friday for spaghetti day. The tomato sauce pot."

Castiel followed Thomas back behind the counter and into the kitchen where he was handed a large soup pot and left, with a request to please pile together anything he touched so that it could be washed again, to do his own searching. The pot was clean, though. Everything was. Castiel made an effort to look closely at several things, but, frankly, there was no real place to start. Everything was pristine – well used, but pristine. If there had been any evidence here before, he felt sure it had been scrubbed away by now. He placed the pot into the sink to be cleaned again and made his way back out into the seating area to find Claire. It seemed that at least one of the homeless had not been scared away and had wandered in sometime while he was in the kitchen, a tall, lank, but hunching-over type fellow with dark hair and dark circles under pale eyes. Claire was now sitting across a table from him, chatting again. Castiel crossed over to them and sat down next to her, ignoring Claire's look of warning at how the man cringed away from him. He smiled at the man.

"You're early. Thomas will be happy to see you here when he comes back," Castiel said, shrugging off both his overcoat and his suit jacket and loosening his tie from where he had cinched it up to suit his disguise. The man relaxed a little, but still looked out of place, confused as to his role in this conversation.

"He's not in trouble, is he?" the man asked, eyes flicking between Castiel and the serving counter as though he expected Thomas to come out and be arrested any minute.

Castiel squinted a little in confusion at that, but his confusion was gentle, not probing, the slight wrinkles at his eyes made deeper by a bit of a smile. "Should he be?" he asked, and the question was taken properly as a joke. "He was helping me take a look at the kitchen. Everything looks clean here, though. Not much to find."

The man sat up a little straighter, a little accusingly. "You expect it to be dirty? We keep things nice here. We're the ones who do the cleaning."

Castiel nodded. "I know." He didn't know. But he'd been in places that operated like that before, done the dishes out of gratefulness for a meal. He was telling half-truths again and ignoring how carefully Claire watched him. "Everything checked out. We were just hoping we could find something, anything at all that would help us close this case out as soon as possible." Castiel lowered his head, his eyes still on the man. "This isn't the kind of place anyone wants closed for too long. And sometimes permission to re-open your doors isn't enough to really re-open them." He pursed his lips and lowered his eyes to the table. "You know what I mean," he said, adding one of Thomas' phrases to what he already knew about how to talk to these people. These people, once his kind of people, thrived on the familiar and safe. Sure enough, the man slumped back down a little, relaxing.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I know what you mean. People don't want to come back after what happened. I didn't see it; I was still outside the doors in the line when it happened. But I heard the screaming." The man sighed heavily. "And even I wasn't sure about coming back."

"Well, like I said, Thomas will be glad you did, Mr. . . ."

"Sam," the man said, holding out his hand.

"Clarence," Castiel said, taking the hand and shaking it firmly.

Sam smiled, the smile cutting across his thin face awkwardly but not itself an awkward smile; it was an open one. "You don't put me much in mind of the other suits who came through here earlier this week."

"Well," Castiel said, mouth quirking into a grin, "one of my colleagues would say that's because we're 'a kinder, more caring establishment'." He did air-quotes around that and saw Claire rolling her eyes out of the corner of his. "But really it's probably just a personal interest. I lived on the streets once, before this job. You get a feel for places, a sort of instinct for them. This seems like a nice one. I'd hate to see anything happen to hurt it."

Sam nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, you get an instinct for people too. I thought there was something different about you. Can't say I'm not glad somebody has a 'personal interest' in this place. It does good by us, the church too. That business with Father Timothy . . . I don't know why, but it feels like something or somebody has it in for us. I hope you find them if they're out there."

Castiel nodded seriously, slowly. Then he picked up his jacket and coat and stood up, holding out his hand again. "We will." Sam shook his hand again, and Claire stood up to follow him toward the exit near the end of the serving counter.

"Did you find anything?" Claire asked eagerly.

Castiel shook his head, and he put his hand to the doorknob to turn it, but then something inexplicably drew his eye. At this end of the counter, there were several boxes of plastic gloves for the volunteers to use when serving. He picked up the box of size large gloves and looked closely at the short end that had been facing him. A small symbol was there, a tiny circle crowned by six symbols. He didn't recognize it; he didn't understand it. But something in him, deep down and long buried, chilled and churned in fury and disgust. Righteous anger.

He swallowed it down. The feeling made him nervous, reminded him of more arrogant, self-assured times in his recent past. But his eyes honed in on at least one symbol that made some sense to him, and, seeing it, he couldn't quite convince himself that it wasn't right to feel as he did. An upside down cross rested in one of the most recognizable symbols of the End, and his teeth ground at the implications of that particular brand of blasphemy.

He tore his eyes from it, and handed it quickly to Claire, opening the door and stepping out into fresh air. He took a deep breath.

"We stealing now?" Claire asked, confused. "Gloves?"

He strode purposefully toward the Impala, waiting for her to catch up before answering. "There's a symbol on the box. I think it might be what we're looking for. Some sort of . . . some sort of curse or . . ." He grimaced. "Nothing good."

"Ok . . ." Claire said, turning the box over in her hands until she found the the symbol. "I thought you said you weren't good at BS-ing."

Castiel turned his head toward her at that. "What?"

"You said you weren't good at it. But you handled that homeless man pretty well, telling him all that stuff about how you were homeless once." Claire grinned. "Isn't it a sin to lie?"

"I didn't," Castiel said. "It wasn't a lie."

"Ok, fine," Claire said, frowning, "but I don't think being temporarily ejected from the vessel you liked best counts as homelessness."

Castiel blinked. He paused on the sidewalk still a few steps from the car and turned to look at her. Just when he thought they'd put this behind them . . . His earlier epiphany had faded with the visceral response to that mark, and half truths and soothing nods weren't coming easily to him now. He spoke bluntly. "My grace, the thing that makes me an angel, was taken from me and not replaced again for the better part of a year. I was human, I was alone, and I was homeless. I was not speaking of being ejected from your father. I was speaking of the time I spent as Clarence and later as Steve, sleeping in abandoned train cars and eating in soup kitchens."

Claire just blinked at him. He hadn't raised his voice, but she still felt like she'd been reprimanded. "Sorry . . . I didn't know."

Castiel blinked back. "Most people wouldn't guess. It's not precisely what one expects. But, then, very rarely is any person's life what we might expect."

Claire considered that for a moment, getting her mind around the unexpectedly philosophical nature of that response. Then she smiled. "You're being deep again."

Castiel squinted in bafflement, then realized what she was referring to and returned the smile. "Yes. For a doof."

"Hey." Dean's voice sounded across the thin, grassy yard behind the church, causing both Castiel and Claire to turn. "Find anything?"

Castiel turned back to Claire and nodded as Dean and Sam approached. The four met at the car where Claire handed the box of gloves to Dean. "There's a mark on that end," she said, pointing it out.

"Yeah," Dean said, looking it over grimly. "We found one just like it on the altar in the church."

"Well," Sam said, "on the altar cloth."

"Which was on the altar," Dean said, turning toward Sam in exasperation.

"Right," Sam conceded, shrugging. "On the altar cloth on the altar."

Castiel wrestled with his feelings at that, surprised again by the disgust that rose up in him. "Is that where the priest died?" Father Timothy, homeless Sam had called him.

"Yeah," Dean said, opening up the driver's side door and tossing the box of gloves into the back floorboard. "I suppose it's safe to drive with that."

Castiel frowned but said nothing as Dean climbed into the car. He crossed to the opposite side and slid into the car himself, grabbing the box as Claire got in on her side and Sam folded into the shotgun seat. Castiel looked for some place to put the box, but, since he didn't find one, kept turning it in his hands on its long side, avoiding the short end with the symbol on it.

"So," Sam began, "what do we know?"

"Not much," Dean said. "Somebody's doing this, but that's not any witchcraft we've seen before. Hopefully, Mom will have something for us soon."

"We can't say that the witches, if that's what they are, have it in for this church," Sam said. "Not yet, anyway. We may find out the other deaths were people who went to this church."

Castiel kept turning the box in his hands, unable to put into words what he thought or, rather, felt about the mark, and let Claire keep their end of this conversation going.

"Cas?" Dean prompted.

Castiel kept turning the box. Abruptly, he realized the reason he had been prompted was that nothing had been said for some time now, not by him . . . and not by Claire. Looking up at her in confusion, he startled. Claire was staring at him. He opened his mouth to explain about the box and turning it, which surely must have been what she was going to ask about, but his tongue froze as his eyes took in her blank face, unnaturally wide eyes, and her hands subtly turning something themselves. Or rather, twisting; twisting the bottom of her shirt almost nervously as she pressed her fists into her stomach. Castiel reached out and stilled her hands firmly.

"Claire?" he asked quietly. Both people in the front seats twisted around to look at them, but Castiel was watching Claire's eyes. "What's wrong?"

Claire opened her mouth and formed a word. "Dad?" she asked. But there was no sound. Instead, blood erupted from her throat, spraying Castiel's chest and sleeves.

Castiel lurched backward, grabbing the door handle on his side and wrenching the door open. Then he lurched forward, grabbing Claire by the upper arms and bodily pulling her from the car and out onto the gravel of the parking lot. He could hear Dean and Sam yelling, but Castiel was already placing his hand on Claire's head and throwing every ounce of power he could muster as a broken angel into healing her. Something pushed back, and he struggled to hold his ground. Claire began to shake in his arms, but he remained focused.

Dean climbed into the back seat of the Impala and began turning it inside out in case it was something in the car, not the mark on the box, that was doing this. "I've got nothing, Sam!"

"I don't think it's the box," Sam called back. He grabbed at Claire, shoving his hands into her jacket pockets and spilling anything and everything in them onto the ground: a cell phone, a set of keys, a napkin with a phone number on it. Sam ran his hands over it, turning everything over before turning to check her jeans' pockets, then abruptly he turned back to the small pile of things on the ground, just registering that he'd seem something else. On the back side of the napkin, a symbol was scrawled in pen that matched the other two they'd found. "Dean, I found it! Lighter!"

Dean threw him one from in the car. It hit the gravel and tumbled toward Sam who snatched it up and lit the edge of the napkin. Dean and Sam both turned toward Claire and Castiel, waiting for the hex to break. By now, Castiel too was trembling, shaking with the effort of healing this wound that kept fighting back. Castiel showed no signs of relenting; Claire showed no signs of improving.

Sam looked up at Dean, his eyes wide. "It didn't break. It's not a hex, Dean."

"Well, what then?" Dean yelled, and suddenly, just as he did, there was a surprised grunt from Castiel and a gasp from Claire.

The two of them fell to the ground shaking, huddled together, but when Sam and Dean scrambled to check them they found Castiel had relinquished his hold on Claire's head and Claire was breathing. They all took a few moments in silence to recover. After some time, Claire began trembling again, but this time it was simple shock. Castiel sat up, pulling her up with him and into his arms, rocking her. Dean drew a hand over his face as Sam eyed the box of gloves and the ashes of the napkin warily.

"It wasn't a hex," Sam repeated. "The mark didn't do it."

"The attack stopped after you burned the mark," Dean said.

"Yeah, but not right after, Dean," Sam said. "It wasn't the mark."

Castiel looked up at them, shaking his head. "No, it wasn't. But we should get Claire home." He pulled Claire into the right position and slipped his arms under her in a bridal carry. As gently as possible, he slid back into the car, Claire still in his arms. She had her hands wound up in his shirt and her face buried in his chest, and he didn't feel like trying to pull her off.

Dean got quickly back into the driver's seat, while Sam picked up Claire's keys and phone. He picked up the box of gloves too, but on second thought he placed it on the ground and lit the box with his lighter, placing the flame right where the mark was so it would burn first. It didn't hurt to be careful, and they already had a picture of it on his phone. That done, Sam climbed into his seat and grimly nodded. His face was turned straight ahead, but Dean understood and was already shifting into reverse. A moment later, the Impala swerved out of the parking lot and onto the street. Castiel had the disjointed thought that none of them were wearing their seatbelts, and he held Claire closer.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Notes** : I'm back! Whoo! Guy's, I'm really sorry. My life is so hectic right now and did NOT slow down any when I was hoping it would. Plus, this chapter really gave me a hard time. I spent months trying to get it to come out right, and I think I'm finally satisfied with it. It's a slow one, but it's also short, and we'll be back to the action and drama with the next chapter! Thanks to all the people who have shown interest in this story by favoriting or following.

 **Disclaimer** : See chapter one's.

 **Chapter 4: Ready When Everyone Else Is**

They had taken Claire home, but they hadn't stayed there long. Circe had been out when they arrived but had walked in on them only minutes later, and, to avoid questions, Sam had had to talk their way out of staying. At least Claire had had enough time to change out of and hide her bloody shirt, putting on a dark navy one with a decorative splotch of neon blue on the left side. In other circumstances, it might have been humorous how Circe had quickly pulled a few bills cash from under her pillow and stuffed them in Claire's jacket pocket as she left like she was her mom. Under these circumstances, they were all keen on leaving before Circe decided to object to Claire leaving in her current state.

Now they were sat at a corner table in a locally owned café, silently waiting on their orders to arrive. Dean had ordered a soda and pancakes, Sam had ordered water and an omelet, which he nevertheless seemed to find dissatisfactory in some way Claire couldn't determine, and Castiel had ordered a breakfast platter for her, something too big for her to ever finish but with a variety of items to pick at. He hadn't ordered any food for himself, but Claire had been surprised to hear him ask for a cup of coffee for himself as he ordered her a glass of orange juice.

An angel who drinks coffee. While they waited, she added that to the list of things she knew he liked – trench coats, ugly old cars, Winchesters, coffee.

No one said anything to Claire until the waiter had brought all the food and drinks and Claire had made her way through at least one biscuit slathered in white gravy. She wasn't surprised, though, when someone finally did say something. Castiel, who sat across from her, had been practically studying her progress through her biscuit – about halfway through he had started to gradually, perhaps unconsciously, frown, but he had stopped when Claire had correctly guessed that he wanted her to drink some of her orange juice – and Sam had that practiced air of figurative safe-distance from her that she recognized from the many therapists she had been shuttled between during her time as an underage delinquent.

She knew they were both just biding their time before talking. Dean probably was too in his own way, shoveling his pancakes into his mouth and hoping as well as knowing that one of the other men would speak up first. Claire didn't have to look over at Dean sitting next to her to see that this was what he was doing. She could hear the violence with which he shoved his food into his mouth. Besides that, she simply knew. She'd never say it to anyone, but, while she had come to trust all three of them in some twisted form or fashion, she understood Dean best. To her, they felt like two of a kind with their reckless, wounded-heart need to do everything, even love, violently, and she didn't have to think on what he was doing and why: she knew, because it was what she would do. He would let someone else speak first; in the meantime, he would murder his food.

So she wasn't surprised when someone finally spoke, and she wasn't surprised that it wasn't Dean.

"Feeling a little better, Claire?" Sam asked, quietly and firmly and with her name thrown in unnecessarily, as though to be sure she wouldn't miss that he was talking to her. Claire wasn't sure what he had studied in college, but Dean had mentioned he'd gone. She wondered if he'd majored in psychology.

Claire nodded as she swallowed what she had in her mouth. "Fine," she said. "Good to go."

Sam nodded at the same time that Castiel frowned slightly. "Good," Sam said. Castiel's frown deepened, and he looked at Sam critically. Sam didn't notice Castiel's growing displeasure, but he added, "We'll get back to it right after we've talked over what we've learned, then," and Castiel paused, then nodded, seemingly appeased for the moment.

Claire rolled her eyes, finally losing her patience with Castiel's mothering . . . or fathering. Whatever it was. Right now it was especially annoying. "You can quit acting like I'm going to pass out if I decide to stand up too fast, Castiel," she said, putting down her fork and leaning back in her chair. "We're not going to do this again."

Castiel's frown turned baffled. "Do what again?"

"This," Claire said, gesturing at him. "You. Trying to parent me. We're done with that."

Claire had expected Castiel's baffled frown to turn hurt, but instead it turned concerned again. Which was aggravating.

"What?" she half asked, half huffed out in a rush of breath.

"You . . . mentioned your father. While the spell was on you," Castiel said, that worry still in his face.

Claire didn't miss how Castiel avoided saying that she had not just mentioned her father but called him her father, mistaken him for her father. Her gaze dropped to her plate, her thoughts too confused to form an answer to what hadn't even been a question to begin with. A violent pressure was building in Claire, and the only thing keeping her from exploding right now, at that stupid fatherly concern on his stupid father's face, was how simultaneously disarming that concern was to her now. She hated that concern still, and if this kept up for much longer that hate would combust and try fruitlessly to drive him off, but until then her simultaneous need of it would keep that hate simmering.

"For the purposes of the case," Sam began cautiously, well aware of the emotional mine field, "we need to know from your side what happened, Claire." He said her name again, because the wide, vague stare she was aiming at her plate didn't leave him very certain that she was listening. Even so, it took her a moment to respond.

"Right," she said finally, taking a hasty but deep breath. "I mean, I don't know what to tell you. It was all just sort of weird and panicked. Fast, you know?"

Sam's lips pressed into a thin, sympathetic line as he shared a look with his brother, who, although still not talking, had at least stopped shoveling food and was paying attention.

"Yeah," Sam said. "We all know what getting hit by a witch is like. It's primal, and it doesn't usually make much real sense, . . ." he paused to glance over at Castiel, the most recent victim of hostile witchcraft, "but what it makes you feel can sometimes be a big hint as to what the witch intended."

Claire scoffed. "Um, I think she intended to kill me."

"But why?" Castiel interjected, leaning forward in a jerky, urgent motion before realizing and trying to consciously be more calm. "And how?" he added more gently.

Claire shrugged, rolling her eyes and poking at her food with her fork. "I don't know, maybe because we were poking around where we shouldn't have been? I don't know why we're assuming that it was a personal attack; it could've been anybody, not just me."

"But what about your dad?" Dean finally asked, turning halfway toward her. "You mentioned him."

"He has nothing to do with this," Claire shot back. Her mouth began turning into that tight frown that meant she was both hurt and angry about it. Castiel watched carefully for that frown, because it had confused him so much at first and was always a bad sign, and he tried giving Dean a look to tell him to leave the topic. To his surprise, it was Sam who took up the question.

"Maybe not, Claire, but that spell clearly made you feel something or made you confused somehow so that you mistook Cas for your dad, and right now we have very few leads." Sam pulled out his phone and set it on the table. "Our mom still hasn't gotten back to us with anything about that symbol we found, so all we've got is you. The witch, or witches, made a move. We have to make good on that or move on to the next murder scene with nothing to go on. Again. So anything you can give us is better than nothing."

"Look," Claire said, looking up at Sam but still blindly stabbing her food, "I just had my dad on the brain, ok? I always do when he's around." She gestured toward Castiel with her fork, jabbing it in his direction and accidently flinging a bit of egg at him which landed on his tie. She didn't notice, and Castiel simply whisked it away as he had the blood stains from earlier. "And he'd been talking about being homeless, I guess," she continued as her unwarranted anger slowly diffused. "I don't know, but I think I was thinking about my dad and about what it felt like to be homeless and hungry and then . . . I don't know it was just a jumble of that . . . that feeling. Wanting my dad and being hungry. I don't even remember the blood or anything. I just remember feeling very hungry, like my stomach was going to murder itself hungry." She huffed a laugh as she looked back at her plate. "Not very hungry now, though."

"So maybe," Dean said before she could become any more upset, "the spell is about whatever you're thinking when it hits you. Maybe it just reacts to whatever's already in your head."

"Yeah, and then turns it deadly," Sam added. "It would be hard to know what the toddler, the boy, and the homeless man were thinking, but it makes sense with the priest."

Castiel frowned at Sam. "How? If he was thinking about being hungry too, then why didn't Claire try to eat herself?"

"I don't think he was feeling hungry, Cas, I think he was thinking about the Eucharist. Think about it. The sister who found him said he was preparing for the Eucharist when he died, and the whole idea of the Eucharist," Sam gestured at the food and drink in front of him somewhat excitedly, "is to reflect on Christ's atonement for man's sins by consuming bread and wine that symbolize his flesh and blood. The reports say the priest was consuming his own flesh and drinking his own blood."

"You might be on to something," Dean said, nodding. "Something gross. But something."

"But again we're just assuming this is witches," Sam said.

"Yeah," Dean said. "Because it has witch written all over it."

"Does it?" Sam asked. "I mean, yes, there's the clear spellwork type stuff and the creepy symbols and the 'bodily fluids' as you put it," he ignored Claire's quirked eyebrow at that comment, "but this wasn't a hex." He held up a hand to stop Dean interrupting. "No, I know the attack stopped after we burned the napkin, but not immediately after, Dean, and that's never happened before. If it's a hex, it's a kind we've never seen before. That napkin wasn't a hex bag, either. What kind of witch casts spells without ingredients?" He spread his hands and shrugged. "We've never seen that before."

"No," Castiel offered, frowning in thought, "but some spells do work without ingredients, like Enochian spells or devil's traps. Maybe the witch is simply making use of one we aren't familiar with."

"Or," Sam said, "someone is making use of one we aren't familiar with and isn't a witch at all."

Dean leaned back, throwing up his hands and slapping his thighs. "Well, that could be anyone, then."

"Exactly," Sam said.

"So at this point," Claire said around a mouth full of eggs – at some point she had begun eating again despite her professed lack of appetite - "we're actually hoping this person is a witch?"

Sam thought on that a moment, shaking his head. "I don't know if I'd go that far, but it would certainly make things easier."

"I mean, does it really matter?" Claire asked.

"Absolutely." Everyone turned toward Castiel in surprise at the force with which he'd said that; he was levelling an intense gaze at Claire. "If we don't know what or who this is, we could go in with the wrong plans, the wrong arsenal. We could go in trying to kill a demon with witch-killing bullets or trap an angel with a devil's trap. It matters. Sam is doing the right thing by warning us not to jump to conclusions."

"Ok, Cas," Dean said, looking sideways at him. "Simmer down. She gets it."

"She needs to," Castiel replied, turning toward Dean now, "if she's going to continue hunting." At the look on Dean's face, though, he paused and looked down seemingly embarrassed. "But I'm probably just unnerved by not knowing what this is. I wish I could say witch, but . . ." He looked up at Sam, confusion in the way his eyes scrunched until they nearly closed. "There's something else, something . . . I don't know what. That mark . . . I've never seen it before, but I hate it. I mean truly hate it," he explained as Sam looked confused by his choice of words. "It makes me feel . . . hot and nauseous, feelings that I didn't understand until I had been human but now know I always felt in the presence of something foul and . . . blasphemous. This mark is a blasphemy." Castiel turned his face away from Sam, looking almost as though he expected to be reprimanded. "You know I have not used such words in a long time, but I can't think of another word for it. It disgusts me. And like you, I have never seen a witch produce anything like that."

"So," Claire said, recovering first from Castiel's near-outburst and smiling dubiously, "normal witches with their hexes and 'bodily fluids' don't usually disgust you?"

Castiel looked up at her, blinking confusedly. "I . . . have seen many things to disgust smaller beings. It takes more than a little blood or the bones of dead forest animals to disgust me."

Claire made a show of sitting back in her chair and nodding deferentially. "Sorry, yes, of course. As a smaller being, I had forgotten how tough you are."

Castiel blushed slightly and looked again like a dog expecting to be scolded. "I didn't mean that."

"It's ok, Cas," Sam said, finally coming to his rescue. "Of course you didn't. You were just trying to explain what you felt." He shot Claire a cautionary look; she hadn't had as much time as he or Dean to see how ashamed Castiel could be at the memory of his times of righteous arrogance, and it was important he not decide to clam up about his point of view. Of course, Dean wasn't helping by looking almost as skeptical as Claire about Castiel's momentary return to old ways of perceiving the world. Sam resisted a sigh. "So, basically, you're trying to say that this bad, very bad, the kind of bad that makes an angel feel sick."

"Like, actually sick or, you know, just 'That's just sick!' kind of sick?" Dean asked. Castiel didn't seem to understand that line of questioning, but at least it distracted him from looking like a kicked mongrel.

"What Dean means," Sam said, giving in to that need to sigh, "is did you actually feel like you were sick or was it just so disgusting that you wanted to be sick? Was the mark affecting you somehow?"

Castiel shook his head. "No, it merely . . ." his eyes flickered from Sam to Claire and back, "disturbed me greatly."

Claire held out her hand to Sam, ignoring Castiel's discomfort. "You have a picture of it, right?"

Sam pulled up the picture on his phone and handed it to her.

Claire's face grew more and more disappointed as she studied the picture, turning it upside down and sideways to check every angle. "I'm not recognizing anything. Except for the last symbol with the cross and the Omega, anyway."

"That's all I recognized too," Sam said, nodding. "Why? Did you think you'd seen something in it earlier?"

"No, but I have this book about Enochian stuff that Dean gave me. Just thought if angels don't like it maybe something would be familiar. What I want to know," she said, ignoring the questioning look Sam gave Dean at that, "is how this mark ended up in my pocket. You said it was on a napkin, right?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "It had a phone number on it too."

"Hope it wasn't from anyone special," Dean said, grinning.

Claire rolled her eyes. "No, but that old lady I was talking to in the soup kitchen," she finally stopped ignoring Castiel long enough to check that he was remembering the person in question, "wrote her phone number on a napkin so I could call her if we had any other questions."

"You see her write anything besides her phone number?" Dean asked.

"No, nothing," Claire replied. "I would've seen her writing something this complicated; I was watching the whole time."

"So the mark was already on the napkin," Sam reasoned. "And, Cas, the mark you found was on a box of serving gloves."

"Both the gloves and the napkins were in the same place on the serving line," Claire said, eyes squinting as she pictured the room in her mind, "but the thing is, if that mark has to be on you or near you for you to die, why were neither of the marks we found anywhere near the middle of the serving line where the guy with the tomato sauce was? They served the spaghetti first, then the sauce, then the meatballs, then the bread. The homeless guy and the volunteer were both nowhere near the napkins or the gloves when they died."

"Maybe the guy had a napkin already or something," Dean said. "And I'm sure the server was wearing gloves."

"Yeah, but the mark wasn't on the gloves," Sam said. "It was on the box. So maybe there was another mark somewhere else that got cleaned up. Either way, this means active marks could still be out there, and we have no idea how they work and maybe no idea how to stop them. People are still in danger."

Dean gritted his teeth and tossed his fork into his empty plate. "It'd be a waste of time to try to find the marks and get rid of them, so we have time to maybe hit a couple more of the murder sites for now."

"I think we should go to the library next," Claire said, sitting forward eagerly. "I was thinking on the drive over here that the library is small. Small town, you know? And this library apparently specializes in documents about the town itself, like maps and census records. It's tiny. When I looked it up, it showed it was public but definitely kind of left to its own devices, locally owned and managed by some older lady. So I'm thinking whoever it was that left a mark there might have left some other evidence that they were there. Maybe they talked to the librarian or had some sort of mud on their shoes and were the only visitor that day. I don't know. But it has to be a better shot than the car the kid died in, which has been impounded already, or the daycare the baby died in, which has already reopened and is sanitized daily to keep the dozens of kids from spreading diseases to each other every week."

Sam "hmph"ed to himself. "Does sound like our best bet. If we're lucky, the killer checked out a book," he joked as Dean and Castiel both nodded their agreement, Castiel a little more enthusiastically than strictly necessary, perhaps trying to make up for his earlier harsh reply to Claire's question.

"Do any of you have a phone number for the soup kitchen?" Claire asked. Castiel silently fished a napkin out of his own pocket, then sheepishly checked it thoroughly for a mark before handing it over.

Claire picked up Sam's phone and dialed the number, not bothering to hide her amusement that Castiel had entirely forgotten to check the napkin in his own pocket for possible deadly spellwork. Sam finished his omelet while she called the kitchen, apparently was answered by the same old lady she had spoken with earlier, and with apologies that sounded genuine explained that she had lost the lady's personal number. She scrawled the number she was given down on the napkin Castiel had handed her and pocketed it after hanging up.

"Alright," she said, handing Sam's phone back to him. "Ready when everyone else is."

All three of her companions studied her for a moment but then got up without questioning her. Dean placed money on the table for the meal, and Claire fished out for the tip a few of the dollars that Circe had given her. The four of them roared out of the parking lot a few minutes later with Claire giving directions by memory to the library. In a small town, it only took them a few minutes more to arrive, despite a few wrong turns, which was good, because any longer and both Claire and Sam would have given up being patient with Dean's muttering about "incomprehensible, smart-ass college kids" and their bad directions.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Notes:** Howdy! Sorry it's been so long! First year public school teachers have a lot to get used to. I'm determined to pick this up again, though, since it's a story I still want to tell and enjoy reading. Is that weird? Bit like a cook complimenting their own food? But if I don't enjoy reading it, why should anyone else! Right? Right.

 **Disclaimer:** See chapter one's.

 **Chapter 5: These Older Types**

The library was adorable. Hidden away on a corner in a residential neighborhood, it had to have been an actual home once, and Claire was fairly certain that her grandmother's house had had shutters exactly like the ones on this building's windows. It was small, made of red brick and lightly stained wood, and a slate-paved path led up to a small porch with rough cedar columns and rusted hooks in the overhead that must have once supported a porch swing. It was old, though. Mold and a lingering damp covered everything, making Claire hope that getting up that slippery slate path was the most dangerous challenge they'd face here.

Dean and Sam insisted on going first, Castiel bringing up the rear, and Sam knocked before picking the lock, just in case. As they entered the dark entryway and Dean flicked on the lights, Claire half expected to see carpet, flowered wallpaper, and pictures of young children on the walls, but if someone's grandmother had ever lived here, the place had been completely gutted to make way for the library. The entryway was floored with dark hardwood and ran the length of the building all the way to a back door which was no longer in use and covered with a large bookcase so that no one would try to leave that way. The walls were a clean off-white with the occasional framed map. The first doorway, to their left, led into the reception and check-out area. This time Claire half expected to see blood everywhere, on the walls and the desk and the computer. But then she remembered that the librarian, although she had slit her wrists with library cards, had done so at home. Or . . . her face screwed up in thought as she took a page out of Sam's book, perhaps she shouldn't assume that the librarian had slit her own wrists at all . . .

"So . . . anybody know how to hack into a computer?" she asked.

Sam shrugged. "Maybe we won't have to." He moved behind the desk and turned the computer monitor on, frowning at it as the old contraption took several moments to wake up. When it was finally operational, it showed that the computer, despite the librarian having been dead for five days, had never been actually turned off, only the monitor had been.

Dean, who had walked up behind Sam while he waited on the monitor to wake, pointed out the screen to Claire. "See, these older types on these older type computers sometimes don't actually take the time to log out and turn things off. Who's going to go messing around on the desk computer in a place like this? Easy access."

Sam nodded and opened the saved documents, scanning through the few entries. "No records of check-ins or check-outs, though."

"Again," Dean remarked, holding a notebook aloft with a flourish, "These older types. The records were kept by hand." He placed the notebook back on the counter where he'd found it, opened it to the most recent page, and turned the notebook toward Castiel and Claire. "You check those. Sam and I will check the rest of the place." And then both Winchesters were gone, back into the hallway.

"Aren't you supposed to not split up?" Claire mumbled as she scanned the notebook in front of her and studiously avoided looking up at Castiel. She'd been doing that. Castiel understood why and didn't push her on it.

"Actually," Castiel replied evenly, "they split up quite often. I guess the movies aren't always accurate."

Claire snorted. "You've watched movies?"

Castiel just sighed. "I don't know why you're always surprised that I've done things. I'm very old, you know."

"I guess. But so is this place, and it doesn't look like it's ever seen anything exciting." She slid the notebook over to Castiel. "I don't recognize the names of any other victims. The last person to come in just initialed the book C. M. G. But then-"

"They crossed it out," Castiel finished for her, squinting curiously at the page. "The letters are clearly visible underneath, but the person tried to scribble out their entry and replace it with 'Mary Griffin'."

"How much you wanna bet their name isn't Mary Griffin?" Claire said, quirking a brow.

Castiel frowned. "It could be Mary Griffin. The last two initials fit. Maybe she doesn't like her first name?"

Claire scoffed. "Sure. They go by their middle name but forgot due to the utter shock of visiting a public library. And why initial first and then put in a full name?"

Castiel frowned more deeply.

"The kind of person who isn't using their real name but isn't used to using a fake one," Claire said, answering her own question. "This has all the markings of someone who doesn't want people to know who they are but is new to that feeling. Trust me."

"I don't know . . . that seems like a stretch to me." Castiel remembered taking the name Clarence to hide his identity; none of these thoughts crossed his mind at the time. He just chose a new name and gave it as infrequently as possible.

Claire looked away from Castiel for a moment, sniffed, crossed her arms, then turned back to him, her face carefully neutral. "Look, I know what this looks like. Ok? This person is, I dunno, on the run or something. They write in their initials, because they don't want to use their name. Then they think, 'Oh, but what if they know my name and recognize me by my initials?' So they cross them out. Then they realize nobody else on this list is using initials. Or the librarian finally notices and tells them they have to use a full name. Something. So they make one up." She shrugged at Castiel's searching look. "It's honestly one of the first things you have to learn about hiding your identity: know who you're pretending to be all the time so you don't make these screw-ups."

"Does that mean this person is important then?" Castiel asked.

"Not necessarily. Could just mean the person didn't want their mom to know they'd checked out a book on the sordid history of this town's famous serial killers. But I'd bet money this person didn't want to be recognized."

Castiel's eyebrows scrunched together in concern. "This town is famous for serial killers?"

Claire rolled her eyes and snatched the notebook back. "No, stupid, it was just an example."

Dean and Sam walked back in, eyeing the two askance. "Did someone say serial killers?" Dean asked.

Claire ignored his question, ignored him entirely, and shoved the notebook toward Sam, recalling her earlier musings about whether or not Sam might have studied psychology once. "What do you make of the last entry?"

Sam took a quick look, quirking an eyebrow at it, then closed it and handed it back. "Somebody doesn't like their name much."

Claire grinned and turned to Castiel. "Told ya."

"Claire contends," Castiel said, ignoring the jab, "that whoever was last in here clearly did not wish their name to be recognized, although we can't make any assumptions as to why, and that Mary Griffin is probably not the correct name, regardless of its similarity to the initials."

"Smart," Sam said, watching Claire glow with the compliment. "Yeah, in situations where people are trying to hide their name it's also pretty common to choose really common, mundane names like 'Mary' or 'John.' They don't want to stand out and draw attention."

"Even if we don't know why they didn't want to be recognized, we still want to look into it, right?" Claire pressed.

"Right," Dean said, finally jumping in on something he could contribute to. "No stone unturned. What about the date? Did Mystery Mary visit the day the librarian died?"

"No," Castiel answered. He ignored Claire as her head whipped toward him in surprise; evidently she hadn't thought to check the date of entry. "I checked. Traffic through this library must come seldom. The date is a full two weeks and four days before the librarian died, and the librarian's death was the first incident. The rest all happened later."

Sam frowned. "So probably a coincidence. But still worth looking into. We can stop by the police station next and see who in town might own these initials."

A ping sounded from Claire's pocket, and she pulled it out with a sigh. "Sorry. Probably Circe checking to make sure I don't need my jacket or-" The dripping sarcasm came to an abrupt stop as she checked her cell. "It's another of my alerts. Incident at the college." She looked up, horror widening her eyes. "First responders are arriving now."


End file.
